Mario Tennis Open review – ace return

The Mushroom Kingdom limbers up for another portable sports tournament, but is Nintendo’s new 3DS tennis game more Tim Henman or Roger Federer?

Mario Tennis Open (3DS) – you cannot be serious

Although you’d think the job of plumber and world saviour would keep you perfectly fit Nintendo’s moustachioed mascot also has a long and storied athletic career. Golf, football, baseball, basketball, hockey, volleyball, dodgeball, track & field … you name it he’s played it in Princess Peach’s courtyard.

It’s the tennis games that are our favourite though, with Mario Tennis on the Nintendo 64 being one of our most beloved multiplayer games of all time. More recent entries in the series ruined the action with silly Mario Kart style power-ups and beat ‘em-up esque special moves. This new 3DS title though dials the clock back and returns to the original mix of nuanced simulation and instantly accessible controls.

There are two completely different ways to play Mario Tennis Open, the first of which is based on an over-the-shoulder view of the court where the game moves you automatically to intercept the ball (although you can override it). Depending on the type of shot your opponent uses the point at which their return will land is flashed up as a coloured circle, called a chance area, on your side of the court.

The colour of the chance area relates to one of the colour-coded shot types shown on the touchscreen and if you want you can just sit there playing the game by pressing the right colour at the right time. Quite why anyone would want to turn tennis into a game of Simon we don’t know but we assume it’s aimed at the ultra young and/or ultra casual player.

You can switch to a more normal overhead view by titling the 3DS (or just changing permanently via the option menu), at which point you can get on with what is the most enjoyable portable tennis game we’ve ever played. The whole chance area system remains in both views, but when you’re controlling everything yourself it actually does a very good job of encouraging the use of more varied shots. Not only that but it becomes possible to fake out your opponent by choosing a completely different shot to the one the game suggests.

There are six shot types in total and you can power-up more powerful versions by double-tapping or holding down a button. Doing so from within a chance area enables the most powerful shots in the game, but even these are not impossible to return. Sometimes you need to hit the reverse of the incoming shot, or otherwise get knocked back down the court, and there’s also a jumping shot on the right shoulder button for a bit of Max Payne style shoot dodging.

It’s not an exact replication of the real sport but it’s at least as involved as more serious tennis simulations, and that has always been the secret behind the best Mario sports games. It might have been nice to have an option to strip out the chance areas entirely, essentially recreating the Nintendo 64 game, but that’s probably just our nostalgia speaking.

In gameplay terms then Mario Tennis Open is largely faultless, instead its problem lie in its bare bones spread of options. The single-player mode consists of nothing but a series of blandly presented tournaments. Although that might seem reasonable for a sports games the previous Mario Tennis games on the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance both had highly involved role-playing game style story modes for their single player. That nothing even faintly similar was attempted for the 3DS is a crying shame.

The only other thing to do on your own is a set of four mini-games: the classic Ring Shot (hit the ball through golden rings that appear randomly on the court), Galaxy Rally (keep a rally going as parts of the court disappear beneath your opponent), Ink Showdown (stop Peachy from intercepting your returns as Piranha Plants spit screen-obscuring ink at you), and Super Mario Tennis (a peculiar mix of Super Mario Bros. and squash, where you have to bat the ball at the screen to play the game).

The mini-games are all good fun and are also the primary means for paying for newly unlocked clothing and racquets. Ring Shot and Super Mario Tennis can also be played with a friend, although only in local multiplayer. Online your only options is a tiebreaker or a simple two game, one set match. And… that’s it. There’s a monthly leaderboard but absolutely no structure or variation to the online options at all.

For whatever reason – time and budget we assume – the game’s enjoyable action is badly undermined by a minimum effort range of game modes that make you question the worth of the entire package. Mario Tennis Open is still good fun, but only against another person.

In Short:It plays a great game of tennis, certainly the best on a Nintendo portable, but the feeble range of on and offline game modes sharply reduces its appeal.

Pros:Excellent balance between real world simulation and arcade style action, with accessible but nuanced controls. Attractive graphics and a fun range of mini-games.